Population boom preceded early farming

Domesticated foods feed most of the world’s 7 billion people. Yet as common as domesticated
plants and animals are today, we still do not understand why prehistoric people domesticated
wild resources in the first place. Current debates center on the importance of population-resource
imbalances: does domestication result from experimentation during times of plenty
or from necessity during times of scarcity? Here we show that domestication in Eastern
North America was preceded by significant increases in human population, suggesting
that domestication occurred during times of resource scarcity caused by either competition
for over exploitation of resources. These findings suggest that human modification
of the environment occurs out of necessity, primarily when human populations outstrip
their food supply.